Space

Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have
relative position and direction.[1]Physical space is often conceived in
three lineardimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be
part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime. The concept of
space is considered to be of fundamental importance to an understanding of the
physical universe. However, disagreement continues between philosophers over
whether it is itself an entity, a relationship between entities, or part of a conceptual
framework.
Debates concerning the nature, essence and the mode of existence of space date back
to antiquity; namely, to treatises like the Timaeus of Plato, or Socrates in his reflections
on what the Greeks called khôra (i.e. "space"), or in the Physics of Aristotle (Book IV,
Delta) in the definition of topos (i.e. place), or in the later "geometrical conception of
place" as "space qua extension" in the Discourse on Place (Qawl fi al-Makan) of the
11th-century Arab polymath Alhazen.[2] Many of these classical philosophical questions
were discussed in the Renaissance and then reformulated in the 17th century,
particularly during the early development of classical mechanics. In Isaac Newton's
view, space was absolute—in the sense that it existed permanently and independently
of whether there was any matter in the space.[3] Other natural philosophers,
notably Gottfried Leibniz, thought instead that space was in fact a collection of relations
between objects, given by their distance and direction from one another. In the 18th
century, the philosopher and theologian George Berkeley attempted to refute the
"visibility of spatial depth" in his Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision. Later,
the metaphysician Immanuel Kant said that the concepts of space and time are not
empirical ones derived from experiences of the outside world—they are elements of an
already given systematic framework that humans possess and use to structure all
experiences. Kant referred to the experience of "space" in his Critique of Pure
Reason as being a subjective "pure a priori form of intuition".
In the 19th and 20th centuries mathematicians began to examine geometries that
are non-Euclidean, in which space is conceived as curved, rather than flat. According
to Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, space around gravitational fields deviates
from Euclidean space.[4] Experimental tests of general relativity have confirmed that
non-Euclidean geometries provide a better model for the shape of space.